With a mobile communication system, which can be a cellular telephone system or another personal communication services system, cellular telephones or mobile telephones or another personal communication service system communicates through set ups. There is a radio base station and mobile switching center for those communication devices. The switching center connects the mobile telephone to another wireless telephone or to a wire telephone. If the wire telephone is desired, a public switch telephone network or PSTN is used.
Within the cellular telephone or personal communication system are a number of cells, each cell having a base station with transmitting receiving antennas. With mobile telephone in the cells, access can be granted by transferring predetermined messages to control channel to the mobile switching center. Access to the system is then given to the mobile telephone on an available voice channel. In addition, as a mobile telephone moves from one cell to another, the cell or the switching center transfers the mobile telephone from one cell to another.
Such a mobile switching center may be running under the control of the switching software. This software may store locations of mobile telephones that may move between cells and take care of the transfer between the cells. Various types of tests are required to determine whether the components are operating properly. Such tests can be performed using software simulations. To test actual operations in situations is sometimes required on one or more mobile telephones within a cell and between calls to test the access and hand off capabilities.
However, conventional test techniques require the physical moving are costly and difficult to handle. It is also difficult to move mobile units around a geographic area. Thus, it is necessary to improve the mobile testing system.